There are a million ways for parents to screw up kids. “The Family Fang” serves up a new one: cutting-edge performance art.
As the offspring of controversial artists Caleb and Camille Fang (Jason Butler Harner and Kathryn Hahn), siblings Annie and Baxter were drafted as children into playing parts in their parents’ elaborately staged public performances. The kids pretended to be bank robbers, vampires in a photo studio and buskers with bad voices; in every case, the response was a crowd of concerned and confused strangers. Dad filmed the chaotic scenes, and voila: Art was made.
At least some people called it that.
It was fun while it lasted, but the now-grown Fang kids don’t seem to have escaped the long shadow cast by their parents. Annie (Nicole Kidman) is a once-promising film actress, but her best days are behind her. Baxter (Jason Bateman, who also directs) is a novelist with one good book to his name and years of writer’s block. Maybe all they need is some quality time with Mom and Dad.
Maybe not.
Now older, Caleb and Camille (Christopher Walken and Maryann Plunkett) get angry when Annie and Baxter refuse to take part in a new scheme, so the parents decide to get away for the weekend. But when their abandoned car turns up at a rest area with Caleb’s blood on it, police suspect foul play. Annie, on the other hand, is convinced that her parents are up to their usual tricks. Baxter doesn’t know what to think.
The Fangs’ eccentric pranks are enough to give the movie a fresh and amusing twist on the typical family drama about the psychic wounds of childhood, and the lengths to which kids will go in seeking their parents’ approval. There’s a sense that Caleb’s offspring were little more than puppets to him; he even refers to them, well into adulthood, as “Child A” and “Child B.”
The extraordinary measures he’ll take for his art prompts a fascinating paranoia. Some audience members may wonder whether some of the happenstance of Annie and Baxter’s adult lives was actually orchestrated by their parents. Is it possible the artists are in cahoots with the sheriff, who’s so certain of their deaths? Is Baxter’s former classmate really flirting with him, or was she paid? It’s like “The Truman Show,” except that we — and the poor Fang siblings — never know when the cameras are rolling.
The movie also raises intriguing questions about art. When one of Caleb’s schemes goes awry, he begins to throw a public tantrum. And when that happens these days, you can bet someone will pull out a camera phone to start filming.
“You don’t record me. I record you,” Caleb dismissively tells the man. “This is art, not some YouTube video.”
Bateman does an effective job directing the movie, which is based on a novel by Kevin Wilson (with a script by playwright David Lindsay-Abaire), smartly opting for understatement from his performers, so that their characters’ eccentricities have something to play against.
Much of the movie takes place inside the Fang family home, where the scenes appear to have been shot through a rain cloud, giving the movie a cold, gray cast. But the energy kicks up just in time for a finale that keeps the audience guessing. And that’s not an easy trick to pull off.
